Wow, just look at all the snow! The city must be buried. I knew there would be snow. The weatherman said so, 1 to 2 inches, the biggest snowfall of the season so far. I knew that it would snow. The weatherman promised. But, it must be invisible. I can’t see any snow.

The kids are going wild with the anticipation of being out of school and running in and out of the house all day to make snowballs and snowmen. Most schools are closed, since the weatherman said the weather was definitely going to be bad. You’re not going to believe this, but I can’t see those snowmen either. Something must be wrong with my eyes.

The adults went wild yesterday too with the usual snow panic when the weatherman predicts a snowstorm. Everyone went to the grocery store to “stock up” for the big storm — everyone but me. I’ve really messed up. Don’t know how I’ll get though all those invisible snowdrifts to make it to the store today.

I went to work as usual today. Traffic was light due to the invisible ice on the roads. Most people must have stayed home to enjoy the invisible snow and eat the bread and milk they bought yesterday. If I can’t make it home tonight due to the invisible ice and snow, it will be my own fault. I can’t say I wasn’t warned.

The papers are predicting a second round of snow tonight. Second round? Then the first round must be out there — somewhere. The paper also invited people to send in pictures of the snow. Funny, when I take pictures, the snow doesn’t show up. Too bad. No one will believe how beautiful this invisible snow is without pictures.

Good thing the city was ready for the snow this time. They loaded the salt trucks and sprayed the streets with brine yesterday. The paper explained what brine is; apparently saltwater is a new thing around here. Brine prevents the snow from sticking until the snowplows can remove it. All I can say is those snowplows have done a fantastic job. I can’t see a flake of snow anywhere.

Someone said that weathermen get bored due to the lack of exciting weather events to predict. So when we have a really big storm front like this, they get a little carried away. Thank goodness they let us know about it ahead of time. It would be terrible to be buried in invisible snow and not even know it.

I haven’t heard how many inches of invisible snow we have out there. They seem to be strangely silent about it. You would think that after all the exciting predictions, school closings, panic shopping, missed worked, brined roads, loaded salt trucks and gassed-up snowplows that they could at least tell us how many inches of invisible snow we have.

I have to say one thing about the weathermen; they haven’t backed down an inch. By golly, they predicted snow and if it doesn’t come today then it’s going to come tomorrow. And by the time tomorrow gets here, they will have consulted their radar, weather satellites, barometers, thermometers, almanacs and witch doctors to come up with some explanation for all this invisible snow.

We know all the excuses: The cold front disintegrated just before it got here. It took a strange turn and went south of us. It went north and snowed just a few miles away from where we are. The barometric conditions were not right in the upper atmosphere. It snowed but vaporized before it hit ground. It’s due to global warming.

Of course, everyone knows the real explanation. Weathermen don’t look out the window to see what it’s doing outside. They are too busy studying their radar, charts and instruments and predicting invisible snow.

If I didn’t know that it was invisible, I’d swear that it didn’t snow at all.

Copyright 2007 Sheila Moss